thefryers

So we entered South America via the war torn, crime ridden, drug capital of the world where if the paramilitaries, drug cartels or left wing guerrillas don´t kill you then the fer-de-lance snakes surely will. Or so people would think. The reality is that we found Colombia to be one of the friendliest, most welcoming countries we have been to, where people will cross the street to help you catch a taxi, tell you exactly how much to pay and feel extremely happy that you want to visit their country. We started our colombia trip with Cartagena, the beautiful colonial city made famous by the film Romancing the Stone. Nice park, Big balconies, cobbled streets, lovely. Then we headed up the caribbean coast to Taganga, a small caribbean fishing village with nice beaches and some big ... read more

So, here we are in San Pedro Sula in Honduras, a pretty nondescript, ugly, rather violent town in northern honduras. Apart from that it´s really nice. Our last entry was from Antigua where, before our departure we studied more spanish and climbed another volcano. This one had lava that you could fall into. We toasted marshmallows. Well, I say toast, we made marshmallows combust into a ball of flames as soon as they got within 3 feet of the lava. It was quite hot and toasting marshmallows on it isn´t as easy as it sounds. Then it was off to Semuk champey, Guatemala for some caving, climbing, jumping off stuff and getting stiff necks and bad backs for hitting the water too hard. I´m writing this with my head at a funny angle (well, funnier than ... read more

After visiting the ruins at Palenque we headed back down to San Cristobal for a night and headed out of mexico, destination Guatemala. We caught the bus from San Cristobal to Ciudad Cuauhtemoc, and across the border into Guatemala. This was a surprisingly informal affair that took place in the middle of a busy market - it would have been incredibly easy to just stroll on through. After having our passports stamped by the incredibly laid back and friendly border officials we had a 1.5 hour wait for our bus before crossing some incredible mountain and volcano scenery to our current location, Lago Atitlan. Lago Atitlan is an incredible volcanic lake, ringed by 3 huge volcanoes and numerous indigenous mayan villages. Our plan is to stay here for a couple of weeks studying spanish in one ... read more

After Taxco we headed down to Acapulco for some Loco beach action and dancing chicas. Not. It was a hell-hole so we crashed for the night in a cheap part of town and headed straight out east to Puerto Escondido. Puerto Escondido is a nice little beach town that is famous for it´s surf beach. We stayed at a cool little hostel and met some great people - one of which managed to recover our photos from our empty memory card. There is a lovely little beach outside of the main surf beach which was perfect for kicking back for a few days - so that´s exactly what we did. Nothing. apart from drink the odd cervesa and eat the odd taco.... read more

After the Big Apple we flew down to Mexico City (on the 19th november). Again, apologies for the late updates but as I hurriedly mentioned in the previous post we have been having a bit of a mare with our photos and trouble getting the internet to work. Mexico city is a huge, dirty city with a bit of a traffic problem. We were told that 18 million people live there and that 30% of the population are under 18. Randy buggers, the mexicans. Anyway, we quickly checked the place out (there is a really cool cathedral and some mad old pyramids that the spaniards demolished and built churches on top of), and left the next day for Teotihuacan. Teotihuacan is an ancient city that no-one really knows anything about. They don´t even know who built ... read more